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LAST year, Jiang Yanyong, a 72-year-old army doctor, exposed the Chinese government’s cover-up of the SARS epidemic in Beijing, an act of courage that saved lives and helped defeat the disease. Last month, Jiang was imprisoned.

His crime? Months earlier, he had used his public standing to call on the country’s Communist Party, of which he is a member, to admit its mistake in suppressing the student protest in Tiananmen Square in 1989, when he was among the doctors treating bullet-riddled victims. Reports have now emerged that his jailers are using brainwashing techniques to try and make him recant.

SARS…

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